Introduction to the Enlightenment

What exactly was the enlightenment? And how will this historic time period impact everything else we study this year? Well, the enlightenment started in Europe in the 1400s. And life in Europe was pretty miserable. Life was hard and short, people had no freedom, education, or money. Absolute monarchs, as well as the church, had total power and authority. And things look pretty grim for most people unless they were born the son of a noble man or a wealthy landowner. Then things began to change. First, the European renaissance ushered in a rebirth of learning, knowledge, art, and architecture. The ancient knowledge of the Greeks and Romans was rediscovered and embraced, an education in Europe was on the rise. Second, Europeans began to sail farther around the world and encounter different peoples, lands, plants, and animals. These discoveries sparked questions about the natural world. How much did we truly know about the world around us? Third, people wanted to have a better understanding of how the world worked and why it worked the way that it did. People wanted answers to the question why. When they began to answer those questions, they wanted to know more. This began what was known as the age of enlightenment. But it was the scientific revolution that really started it all. Scientists began to examine the world around them. And conduct experiments to understand why things happened the way they did. People didn't just want to guess as to why things were the way they were. They wanted to know for sure. They wanted proof. Scientists like Galileo, Sir Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Isaac Newton and others, used experimentation and analysis to prove how things worked. And their discoveries led to others wanting to know more. Those discoveries led to others and so on and so on. These new discoveries would help to better understand the natural world, as well as advance the fields of science, medicine, engineering, and agriculture. New discoveries led to new questions, and these led to questions not just about how nature and science worked. But to questions about how and why people did the things that they did. People began to wonder could science and logic be used to explain people. Enlightenment philosophers turn their attention to governments, and questioned why only a few people seem to have all the power and authority. While the majority of the people lived poor lives and had nothing in the way of rights of freedom or opportunity. Philosopher John Locke wrote that man was natural and therefore good. And also had natural rights such as life, liberty, and property. And that government's existed not to control a man but to protect these rights. Locke believed in the idea of a social contract. This contract existed between the people and the government. If the government failed to do its job and protect the rights of the people, then the people had the right to remove that government in overthrow it and replace it with one that would. This was very different from the way things were in most countries around the world. Where people had little to no voice and how their government functions. These ideas became a driving force in the revolutions to come. Voltaire, one of the most outspoken of the fields that philosophers believed in the importance of freedom of religion and speech. Voltaire used his pen and his words to attack those who believed and intolerance, prejudice and superstition. Voltaire, like all enlightenment thinkers, believed in the use of reason and logic. Other thinkers wrote about government reforms and changes that should be made to provide more freedom to the people. And how the government's power should be reduced or even eliminated altogether. These thinkers and writers directly challenged how power had been structured in nations in Europe for hundreds of years. Enlightenment thinkers were popular with the people because most of what they wrote said that the people deserved more. These ideas scared those in power and those in power use that power to silence these ideas and to stop people from reading them and hearing about them. Keeping these ideas silent became harder to do. Thanks to Johann Gutenberg and his printing press. Before the printing press, books were copied by hands, which was very slow. And made books very rare and therefore expensive. Only a very few people knew how to read and write, because only very few people could actually afford to purchase a book. After the invention of the printing press and its use of movable type, printers were able to produce fat books faster and easier, which allowed them to print more and more books, which made them cheaper and easier for people to afford. Scientists and philosophers could now publish their books and get their ideas out into the public mind. More books meant more people wanted to learn how to read and write. The more they wanted to know, the more questions they begin to ask. These questions will lead to changes. And when things tend to change fast enough, revolutions were bound to take place. The alignment was a time when new ideas began to change the world. These ideas would eventually change everything from what we know about the universe, to what we know about ourselves. All of our science today is based on the discoveries from the enlightenment era, and the questions that people just like us started to ask. We may never know everything, but if we continue to apply logic and reason to better understand how the world works, we will hopefully continue to make a better world for ourselves and others and become more enlightened.